Assisted Reproductive Technologies in an Inquiry-based Classroom
Since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978, the mainstream English-language press around the world has valorized IVF doctors and alternately sentimentalized and exaggerated the possibilities afforded by assisted reproduction. Countering such views in the classroom can be difficult, especially because students must grasp the details of reproductive technologies before they can begin to assess the veracity of claims made for them and to examine their ramifications.
For the last several years, I've taught a course titled “Rent-a-Wombs and Donor Eggs” for the Women's and Gender Studies program at the University of Miami using an inquiry-based pedagogical approach, which has proved especially fruitful in dealing with a topical subject like ARTs. The inquiry approach is effectively the opposite of the stand-and-deliver format that Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire
Of course, because the class is at the 300 level and is often taken by students majoring or minoring in the Women’s and Gender Studies program, there’s a heavy reading list. It covers feminist, social justice, and disability rights critiques of reproductive medicine, economic analyses of the global market for IVF and surrogacy, surveys of national and international governance mechanisms, religious and cultural attitudes toward ARTs, popular representations of the technologies, eugenical implications, and potential future developments. But much of the content is shaped by the individual interests of those taking the class in a particular semester.